Unfortunately for the people of the world everything is going according to the New World Order Plan. But what is this New World Order Plan? In a nutshell the Plan is this. The Dark Agenda of the secret planners of the New World Order is to reduce the world's population to a "sustainable" level "in perpetual balance with nature" by a ruthless Population Control Agenda via Population and Reproduction Control. A Mass Culling of the People via Planned Parenthood, toxic adulteration of water and food supplies, release of weaponised man-made viruses, man-made pandemics, mass vaccination campaigns and a planned Third World War. Then, the Dark Agenda will impose upon the drastically reduced world population a global feudal-fascist state with a World Government, World Religion, World Army, World Central Bank, World Currency and a micro-chipped population. In short, to kill 90% of the world's population and to control all aspects of the human condition and thus rule everyone, everywhere from the cradle to the grave.

The power urge of the Roman Catholic Church manifested twofold. First, in the complete control over the laity from the cradle to the grave. Second, perpetual attacks against secular governments and royal dynasties thereby keeping the temporal ambitions of kings and politicians at bay. The ecclesiastical assaults against secular governments not only impugned sovereignty but to an equal degree the standing of the laity. To counter this assault on secular power, intellectuals sought to legitimise a non-ecclesiastic authority. To this end, they strove to harness Roman law and Roman law scholarship to the cause of sovereign secular government. The Ravenna jurist, Petrus Crazes, in a tract entitled In defence of King Henry wrote the first significant document that indicated the re-surfacing of Roman law, in 1084. He used Roman law in a thoroughly professional manner; it was also well written, and showed that the author knew his subject well -the Digest as well as the Code of Justinian (the Corpus Juris Civilis).

It was a well argued rebuttal of Pope Gregory's attacks against king Henry II, in the so-called Investiture Contest, representing them as essentially flawed, they being unjust, unlawful and indefensible. Crassus was replying to the pope's attack on the absence of the 'right law' on the royal side. Roman law had always been regarded as the pinnacle of jurisprudence for it appeared technically flawless and its ancestry impeccable. It also preceded any ecclesiastical law, which the papacy would have been able to invoke. By invoking Roman law in defence of the king, Crassus was therefore appealing to a rational system that had a pedigree and a distinction that was beyond reproach.

Concomitant too this movement was those aspects of secular activity that were also at large in society. It was the melding together of Roman law based on secular government with the myriad secular aspects present within society that presaged the Aristotelian rationalism in the thirteenth century. In addition, it was following this assimilation of Aristotelian rationalism that man-as-object emerged. Here was the shift in the consciousness of man: away from contemplation of the Divine, and a preoccupation with rebirth into a paradisiacal afterlife, to a concentration on 'Man' and especially his 'Humanity' and their development in this life. This dilemma of kingship, the chronic state of ambivalence between natural leadership of his people as his birthright decreed and his aspiration as the full co-regent or athlete of Christ (Athleta Christi), as the coronation rituals had proclaimed, was exacerbated by the ambitions of successive popes throughout the medieval period and beyond.

For. these 'vicars of Christ' saw themselves as something more than high office functionaries, they regarded their office as sacred, given to them in Apostolic Succession through the ages since Peter and thus above royal, secular or mundane authority. It was this absolute power the Church wielded over kings and parliaments that was the first target of the humanists. In this wise the famous Investiture Controversy (1075-1122) is a plangent moment in the historical process when the absolute authority of the Church was challenged and its iron grip over human affairs loosened. The so-called Investiture Controversy was a power struggle between reforming popes and lay rulers, notably the German emperor, over leadership of Christian Europe. It was named after the royal practice of investing a newly appointed bishop or abbot with a ring or pastoral staff -the symbols of his spiritual office. Gregory VII condemned this lay investiture practice in 1075 as epitomising secular domination of the Church. Henry IV was excommunication the following year after he refused to accept the ruling.

A respite in the conflict following Henry's death in 1106 was broken in 1111 when Henry V captured Paschal II (c.1050–1118), and forced him to concede that only lay rulers could endow prelates with their temporalities (lands and other possessions). The Lateran Council of 1112 overturned this causing a rift in the church between pro-papal and pro-imperial factions. Settlement was reached 1122 at the Diet of Worms, when it was agreed that lay rulers could not appoint prelates but could continue to invest them with their temporalities. The long struggle between emperors and popes permanently weakened the German monarchy in favour of the princes, which was responsible for the fragmented nature of the German nation up until the time of Bismarck.

This conflict between secular and ecclesiastic authorities for control over the temporal affairs of men is epitomised in that contest between Pope Gregory VII(c.1020-85) and the German king Henry IV (1050-1106). Pope Gregory, his original name was Hildebrand, was born, to lowly stock, at Soana in Tuscany and passed his youth in Rome, in the monastery of St. Maria. On the death of Alexander II, he was elected pontiff in 1073 and immediately set about to amending the secularised condition of the Church. His efforts were focused on those things, which he regarded as the cause of all evil in Europe vis-à-vis feudal standing of the higher clergy, the claims of sovereigns upon temporalities and the consequent temptation to simony. Gregory regarded the pattern of Church relations skewed the wrong way. He used the Donation of Constantine (Donatio Constantini) as authority for his assertions. This was a forged document of Carolingian manufacture that purported to be a grant from the Emperor Constantine the Great to the pope and the Roman Church not only many of his rights but also large privileges and rich possessions.

Its intention was to justify the papacy's aspirations to political power in the West. The Donation is addressed by Constantine to Pope Sylvester I (314-35) and consists of two parts, the first part is called the Confessio and the second part called Donatio. In the Confessio, Constantine recounts his instruction into the Christian Faith by Sylvester and also makes a full profession of faith, and also tells of his baptism in Rome by Sylvester, and how he was then miraculously cured of leprosy. In the Donatio, Constantine is made to confer on Sylvester and his successors the following privileges and possessions. The pope, as successor of Peter, is ascendant not only over the four Patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Jerusalem but also over all the bishops in the world. The Lateran basilica at Rome, built by Constantine, shall transcend all churches as their head and the churches of St Peter and St Paul shall be endowed with rich possessions.

Furthermore, the pope shall enjoy the same honorary rights as the emperor, such as the right to wear an imperial crown, a purple cloak and tunic, and in general all imperial insignia or signs of distinction. However, as Sylvester refused to put on his head a golden crown, Constantine invested him with the high white cap (phrygium) instead. Moreover, states this document, Constantine the Great rendered to the pope the service of a strator, that is, he led the horse upon which the pope rode. What is more, the emperor also makes a present to the pope and his successors of the Lateran palace, of Rome and the provinces, districts, and towns of Italy and all the Western regions. Moreover, the chief Roman ecclesiastics (clerici cadinales) shall obtain the same honours and distinctions as the Roman senators. And like the emperor the Roman Church shall have as functionaries: cubicularii, ostiarii, and excubitores. The Donation of Constantine states that he, Constantine, has established in the East a new capital for himself, which bears his name. And its is to this new capital that he removes his government to, since it is inopportune that a secular emperor have power where God has established the residence of the head of the Christian religion. The document concludes with the assurance that the Constantine has signed them with his own hand and placed them on the tomb of St Peter and with imprecations against all who dare to violate these donations. Although the document is without doubt a forgery fabricated somewhere between the years 750 and 850 and was known as such as early as the fifteenth century, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa for instance referred to it as a dictamen apocryphum, Gregory in the eleventh century was assured of its authenticity.

Gregory, during his reforms of the papal chancery, also ordered a search of the papal archives for supportive documentation to confirm and extend the powers contained in the Donation. From these searches Gregory drew up a list of claims, the Dictatus Papae, which included the following assertions. That the Church was founded by God and that the pope alone may use the imperial insignia. That all princes shall kiss the feet the feet of the pope. No one may retract a sentenced passed by the pope. And that the pope himself, alone of all, may retract it and that the pope himself may be judged by no one and that the Roman Church has never erred, moreover, nor will it err to all eternity, the Scriptures bearing witness.

Gregory attempted to enforce all details of discipline and renewed under heavier penalties the prohibition of simony and marriage of the clergy, which immediately encountered great opposition from the German bishops and priests. But it was against investiture (the ritual by which the king invested bishops with ring and staff) that his main efforts were directed. He argued that these were the spiritualities of the see, and only a priest could confer them. Thus, in 1074 he prohibited this practice, under pain of excommunication, and in 1075 actually issued that sentence against several bishops and councillors of the empire. To reinforce the papal authority over the priesthood and laity alike, to secure the necessary influence in the appointment of bishops and to set aside lay pretensions to the administration of the property of the Church. And thus to dissolve the opposition of the clergy, Gregory, at the Lenten (Roman) Synod of 1075, withdrew: "from the king the right of disposing of bishoprics in future, and relieved all lay persons of the investiture of churches."

And so, using the Lenten synod of 1075 in Rome, Pope Gregory forbade investiture by laymen and effectively caused the bishops to cease being dependent of the Crown and become materially the minions of the papacy. This was a serious event for any German emperor, for the bishops of the empire were also the most important officials of the empire, moreover, the imperial church domains were also the chief source of income of the emperor. It was therefore not simply a matter of pride but a question of life and death for the German Crown to retain its ancient influence over the bishops. It was because of this imperative that the bitter struggle between the two powers began.

And so, the great battle between sacerdotum and regnum, betweenChurch and King, between the canon law and the traditional rights of secular rulers that took place at this time, was centred on the great issue of absolute temporal power in Europe of which the Investiture Contest is its salient example. For, when the lay rulers demanded the right to decide who would occupy the positions of power in their own domains and canon law demanded that clergy had the right to elect themselves, then a power struggle was inevitable. Henry responded to these menaces (at the time he was engaged in pressing his right to appoint bishops in Imperial Italy) and was cited to Rome to answer for his conduct. Henry scorned Gregory and at a synod at Worms (1076) declared the pope deposed. Gregory retaliated by excommunicating the emperor him at the Lenten synod of the same year. Thus the bishops and king again found their interests threatened by the papacy. There followed a heated exchange of letters and the situation thereafter deteriorated into open warfare. The excommunication of the emperor provoked his enemies to act and at Tribur Henry's opponents formed an alliance and hatched a plan whereby they thought Henry was certain to lose his empire. That is, the final decision in Henry's case was left to Gregory and a resolution was passed that if Henry were not freed from excommunication within a year he should forfeit the empire. However, this plan was frustrated when Henry surprised everyone by submitting himself to solemn ecclesiastical penance thereby forcing Gregory as a priest to free him from excommunication (1077).

The young emperor Henry IV was crowned king of the Germans in 1053 and Holy Roman Emperor in 1056. In 1070, he acted to secure his royal power by breaking the power of the nobles, but this action provoked an uprising of the Saxons who, in 1074, prevailed and forced humiliating terms upon Henry. However, he reversed this misfortune in 1075 defeating them at Hohenburg, and he then proceeded to exact vengeance on the princes, secular and ecclesiastical, which had opposed him. The action against the ecclesiastics gave Pope Gregory a pretext to interfere in the affairs of Germany. This hastened the great dual between an anointed king and an elected pope. Gregory never charged Henry with a departure from faith or deviation from Christian principles, but concentrated his attacks against him solely on his violation of his duties as a Christian king. Gregory cruelly exposed the ambivalent nature of the kind of rulership represented by Henry.

By exclaiming "Me, the Lord's anointed, you have dared to touch," Henry opened himself up to papal attack. Gregory concurred with the king that he was indeed the Lord's anointed. However, this was by virtue of mediation of the appropriate ecclesiastical officers on the king's behalf. These ecclesiastics had anointed him and had thus conferred divine grace on him for a very specific purpose, which was defined in the coronation orders, and that was to govern the kingdom entrusted by God to him in the manner of a co-regent of Christ and of an Athleta Christi. This coronation process and the regnal rebirth were what made the king what he was: a "King by the grace of God." Furthermore, by undergoing regnal rebirth and becoming another man the king had explicitly accepted the nobles oblige attendant with this status. He was obliged to accept canonical rulings as to what was, and what was not, Christian in a Christian society. In this context, this is what Gregory meant by his provocative statement that the lowest exorcist was superior to any emperor. The king was not the supreme authority in his kingdom for he was restrained by his acceptance of a conferred crown and was thereby obliged to accept canonical rulings dispensed by a pontiff in Rome.

Concomitant with the king's rebirth was the alienation of his person from the lay princes and his reliance upon the ecclesiastic princes. The high Church officers in medieval courts held positions of great influence, for without them it was impossible for proper government to exist: there was an intimate relationship between ecclesiastic princes and the king. They were usually close relatives or former members of his chancery. They were the social and educational elite of the country, and to lose control over them would severely impair the efficacy of the court.

The Gregorian challenge to the Holy Roman Emperor was virulent and remorseless and was based on a highly rationalised system of law. The law was derived from sophisticated exposition of the Bible accumulated in the preceding centuries by scholars such as Cyprian (c.200-258), and Tertullian (160-230). But especially in the writings of Jerome (c.340-420), Ambrose (c.339-97), Augustine (350-430) and the numerous decrees and statements of popes, councils and so on, down to the late eleventh century. Against this tightly disciplined theistic onslaught the royal side fielded a sloppy defence based on unreflective practices and on tradition. Compounding the royal plight was the lack of concrete or defined cosmogony or ideology. Royalty existed in a world conditioned by custom, tradition, inheritance and the exigencies of contemporary affairs. And here lies the rub. Whilst ecclesiastical law contained all the necessary and cogent arguments to support its assertions the royal law rested its claims on mere custom.

The legitimacy of ecclesiastical law was well established by the Middle Ages where it was called canon law and was considered by most people to be the "right law" for a Christian society. In this context, Isidore of Seville (c.560-636) who had coined the phrase describing ecclesiastical law as the "norm of living" -norma recte vivendi. Canon law, jus canonicum, is thus the sum of the laws and regulations that regulate the ecclesiastical body and for the government of the Christian organization and its members; for this reason it is also called ecclesiastical law, jus ecclesiasticum. Canon law is also referred to under the name of canones, a title of great antiquity and was very early distinguished from the secular laws, from the "civil law" or jus civile.

Although Canon law is also called "ecclesiastical law" (jus ecclesiasticum) strictly speaking, there is a subtle difference in meaning between the two expressions. Whereas Canon law refers to in particular the law of the Corpus Juris that include the regulations borrowed from Roman law, ecclesiastical law refers to all laws made by the ecclesiastical authorities and including those made after the compiling of the Corpus Juris. Moreover, by contrast with the imperial or Caesarean law (jus caesarean), Canon law is sometimes styled pontifical law (jus pontificium), or sacred law (jus sacrum), and sometimes even Divine law (jus divinum). The last two definitions because Canon law is deemed to concern itself with holy things and has for its object the wellbeing of souls in Christian society divinely established by Jesus Christ. Canon law is thus divided into public law (jus externum) and private law (jus privatum). While the former is concerned with the constitution of the Church and Divisions and, consequently, with the relations between the Church and other bodies, religious and civil, the latter has as its object the internal discipline of the ecclesiastical body and its members.

Thus, atavistically, so to speak, while the king could trace his authority back to his forebears the pope could claim God for his. This is why Henry was reported to be disconcerted at the pope's excommunication of him, since he did nothing but what his forebears had done -and in this assertion he was perfectly correct. This argument based upon custom and tradition was turned against Henry. Gregory argued that God was neither custom nor tradition, but the Truth. Furthermore, from the papacy's standpoint, tradition and custom were certainly not in harmony with truth; that is, a "truth" yielded by a pope's interpretation of canonical law. And it was because of these contradictions and tensions inherent in the royal status that medieval monarchs were vulnerable to attack. For, they had no other justification than recourse to tradition and custom, and such testimony is easy prey to the robust arguments of mature doctrines at the disposal of a pope. The king may look to mundane custom for justification of his actions; the pope consults with the canon law derived from "celestial" origins. Thus under the well-argued attack mounted by Gregory the weakness of the royal law revealed itself quite dramatically, especially on the knotty problem on whether custom and tradition, longevity and practice could turn a wrong into a right. For, however ancient a custom was, this in itself did not mean that it was also right, moreover, ancient standing and customary practices could not turn illegality into legality.

Gregory in his use of the law mounted a frontal attack on the institution of all rulership in any shape or form. Because at this time in Christendom, in matters affecting the essential fabric of society, the lay ruler was not free to govern as he pleased for he lacked the essential ingredient of all sovereign rulership -autonomy. The medieval king lacked sharp contours and profile but above all, he lacked the sophisticated arguments and means to parry the attack launched by the papacy, and this reality was the true meaning of the event at Canossa.

For it was here in the castle in the foothills of the Apennines, about eighteen miles from Parma where the dramatic penance of King Henry IV of Germany in presence of Pope Gregory VII took place. Canossa showed the complete vulnerability of the traditional theocratic rulership in the face of a determined, ruthless and well-aimed assault by the Vicar of Christ on the most vulnerable part of medieval monarchy, the absence of a body of law that was independent of any Roman- ecclesiastical origin.

In the face of the intensifying power struggle between Henry, Gregory and the German princes, Henry entered negotiations with the princes, who had assembled with the papal legates at Tribur. He attempted to stem his own increasing loss of support and hoped to split the alliance between the princes and the papacy and pre-empt any attempts at an election of an anti-king. After Henry had made concessions and promised to obey the pope, the princes agreed to recognise him as king, but only if the ban of excommunication was lifted within a year. Henry then hurried of to Canossa to suffer his humiliation. Gregory's excommunication which, unless removed by absolution in twelve months, involved the forfeiture of all civil rights and deposition from every civil and political office. Henry's Saxon subjects appealing over this law against him compelled him to yield. Henry travelled to Canossa and by a humiliating penance, spending three days barefoot in the snow dressed as a penitent as well as kissing Gregory's stirrup in a gesture of feudal humiliation, obtained absolution from Pope Gregory in person. This allowed him to regain the support of the majority of the German nobles. Canossa therefore marks the turning point in the German Empire's relationship with the papacy and the end of the tradition of imperial protection and domination of the Church in German affairs.

The conflict between Henry and Gregory was a culmination of events set in train in the ninth century, with the dénouement when the king, summarily excommunicated in 1076, and seeing his vassals and princes falling away from him, hurried to Canossa as a humble penitent. The recalcitrant king was thereafter deemed humbled by the pope and was released from his misery in January 1077 when the ban of excommunication was removed. The degree of Gregory's power over Henry, and thus the papacy over kings, was explicit in the letter of excommunication he sent to the king in February 1076:

"God has given me through blessed Peter, chief of the apostles … power of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth. Relying on this article of belief … I prohibit Henry the king, son of Henry the emperor, who has risen up against your Church with unexampled arrogance, from ruling in Germany and Italy. And I release all Christians from the oaths which they have sworn or shall swear to him; I forbid all men to serve him as king … and I bind him with the bonds of anathema."

A position Gregory made clear to the bishop of Metz:

"... everybody knows the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who says in the Gospel "You are Peter, and upon this rock I build my church; and whatsoever you bind in earth shall be bound in heaven also; and what you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Are kings excepted here, and are they not among the sheep which the son of God entrusted to St Peter?"

Put differently, Gregory claimed that by virtue of his office, as the Vicar of Christ, he was responsible for the soul of the emperor, and that ipso facto deserved authority on Earth over the latter, and not vice versa. To a king susceptible to attack from disaffected and ambitious subjects, and especially while magnates sought means to extend their own powers and diminishing those of their monarch, such threats were not empty. Gregory also knew that there are things a man needs in extremis that only a priest can supply; which he pointed out in a letter to the bishop of Metz in 1081:

"Every Christian king on his deathbed seeks as a pitiful suppliant the help of a priest so that he can escape hell's prison … and stand at God's judgement seat absolved from the bondage of his sins. What laymen, to say nothing of priests, have ever in his last hour asked an earthly king's help for salvation of his soul?"

Henry was in truth in the thrall of a system his forebears had created and to which he whole-heatedly committed himself, that of theocratic kingship.

For the Frankish and Salian kings and emperors truly believed that by virtue of their coronation they had been given authority from God to carry out affairs as they saw fit. Moreover, it was in this tangled situation that Frederick Barbarossa (1123-1190) could later similarly exercise religious authority by claiming to be the successor of Emperors Justinian and Constantine. Thus, others could question the papal right to supremacy based on the same idea of a true theocracy on the model of the early Christian period. The reforming popes in the twelfth and thirteen centuries and faced a grave problem indeed, centred on the conflicting views of ultimate authority on Earth, and which Gregory and his successors were attempting to unravel, to the benefit of the papacy. The papal reforming movement attempted to genuinely change the foundations of the entire social structure of European society but in doing so seriously destabilised feudal lordship.

The two main aims of the reform movement; both derived from the desire to restore the dignity the Church it had enjoyed at the time of the apostles, were: first, was to increment the piety of clergy at large by removing the temporal influences on clergy at all levels. And second, to re-establish the primacy of the papacy at the head of a robust church hierarchy. Yet, the well-meaning reforms inevitably led to conflict on interests and strife. For example, the demand that no priest was to be judged in a layman's court called into question the status of the temporalities belonging to the priest's church. This in turn threatened the taxable revenue of the feudal lord and threatened his ability to gather troops to defend himself and his own possessions. And so, what originally appeared to be a matter for the church only, in that ecclesiastical courts and the fuller canon law could be used instead of lay courts- had profound effects on the wider governance of Christian countries. For, the pivotal role of the Church in the daily life of the whole of Europe combined with the enormous temporal wealth of its institutions ensured that any changes to the Church were matters of huge concern to all in Christendom who exercised any sort of power.

By the time of the papal council at Clermont in Auvergne (1095), it was becoming very clear to most intelligent men that the papal commands were becoming more dangerous to the temporal power of rulers. For here pope Urban II (c.1042-99) not only by reiterating the Gregorian Decrees against simony, investiture, and clerical marriage but decreed that:

"... having excommunicated all laymen who gave investiture of churches, also bound by that same sentence of excommunication all who became the vassals of laymen for ecclesiastical estates"

However, it was only the German kings and emperors who directly challenged the power of the pope, other rulers cravenly resorted to more devious tactics. The reforming movement without doubt greatly increased the status of the papacy relative to the laity, but this was achieved only in the spiritual sphere, that at root, papal power was perforce spiritual and not actual. A reality demonstrated by Henry V (1081-1125), the son of the humiliated Henry IV, who invaded Italy in 1111 and imprisoned Pope Paschal II until the latter offered concessions. Similarly, it was only the threat of the Lombards and the lure of Crusade that prevented Frederick Barbarossa from humiliating the papacy late in the twelfth century. Thus, although the papal reforms initiated by Gregorian increased the status of the pope as the chief spiritual figure of Christendom, it did not bring a true papal monarchy with absolute power in all things desired by those who controlled the Holy See.

Like the bishops, the German King and Roman Emperor Henry III (1017-1056) considered himself called to the service of God and like Charlemagne he compared himself to the priest-king David. Henry desired to be the ruler of God's universal State, which should constitute the outward and visible form for the Church and thereby carry out the moral idea of Christianity. Henry thus recognised the law of the Church as the arbiter of his conscience and proclaimed this at the very beginning of his reign by announcing that he recognised the fundamental principle of this law vis-à-vis that a bishop could only be judged by the ecclesiastical tribunals. Thus when Henry issued a constitution forbidding monks to swear oaths in law-courts it ostensibly supported the view that it was the consequences of church reform rather than papal ambitions which caused the most resistance form nobles and kings. For monks themselves had no property, and thus the dictates of canon law were not threatening to the lay establishment. Then again, rulings on the status of the clergy also enabled churchmen to attempt to avoid retribution for their temporal mistakes that is by declaring non-recognition of lay courts and authority of secular rulers over them. Henry's humiliation at Canossa demonstrated the fait accompli suffered by theocratic rulers: that they had become victims of the very ideological system they had advocated. And, because of this Henry was hoist by the petard he and his forbears had carefully erected. The system itself had hamstrung the king and the problem now was how to effect a release from the papal clutch and yet still claim the many benefits of a Christian ruler. The power of the papacy was its claim to be God's representative on Earth and this claim was legitimised by its use of ecclesiastical law -canon law.

Since Romish Christianity could never claim to be a natural religion exhaustive, ratiocination and rational argumentation could only establish its legitimacy. In addition, it was from this exhaustive intellectualisation, beginning soon after the Crucifixion, that the precepts, maxims and principles of Romanist Christianity were developed. The creation of these Romanist Christian principles presupposed knowledge of the maxims underpinning Christianity -the so-called "right law." It was this appeal to "right law" that the papacy claimed legitimacy and in this appeal lays the profound significance of the Investiture Contest. For, Pope Gregory, who claimed to be God's representative on Earth and thus the supreme Christian authority in the affairs of men, had declared that in Christian context the traditional royal law was a travesty of the "right law."

Compounding the woes of a medieval Christian king was the dearth of educated people in his kingdom. Those who could read or write were a tiny fraction of the populace, and even fewer had anything like the knowledge necessary to hold high office or to understand what was required in the public interest and in that of the kingdom. There were very few people capable of comprehending, let alone of taking part in, public government. It was for this reason that the kingdom was conceived to be on the same level -intellectually, morally and juristically- as a minor, underage and naïve, who needed guidance, by a wise father -the patriarchal king. Unfortunately the Investiture Contest, and especially the humbling of Henry at Canossa, had shown this benign concept was a sham. The king's influence over his subjects was constrained by papal authority in those matters that vitally affected the very substance of the kingdom entrusted to him by God. The king's function as benign tutor and mentor to his subjects had been shown to be under the sword of Damocles by the application of "right law": a most potent weapon wielded by any hostile pope who desired to lop off what kingly function he decreed unlawful.

The humiliation at Canossa had shown the vulnerability of royal law to the whims of papal authority. Moreover, it starkly portrayed a king as vassal to Roman Church authority. This inescapable conclusion forced to the fore the imperative required to allow a king to fulfil his function as leader; and that was to change the very foundations of government: and this could only be achieved by struggling free from the suffocating embrace of the Church.

The power struggle between Church and State, between Mitre and crown, between the throne and altar, centred on the concept of law. The papacy was secure in its safe harbour of Christianity founded on the "right law," whilst royalty, devoid of a robust ideology and apparent lack of precedent, was at the mercy of papal largesse. This contrast in positions (the strong pope and weak king) was paradoxically the precursor to those changes that ultimately resolved the royal dilemma. The Gregorian papacy, safe behind the bulwark of canon law repeatedly promoted itself as the great enforcer of Christian Law. It constantly reiterated its aim of establishing temporal affairs that mirrored Christian Law (that vast body of works composed of ancient laws, decrees, statutes, and statements). However, this constant appeal by the Gregorian papacy to the law ultimately proved counter-productive. Its arrogant assumption was that the law they promulgated was the only law: and that there were no other legitimate systems of government.

However, the inglorious and public collapse of theocratic kingship at Canossa had spurred the royal houses into action and provoked the search for the very law kingship lacked. The royal imperative was to search for a royal law that could counter head-on the strongest weapon in the papal armoury -canon law. This search for legitimate laws to counter the threat posed by a hostile papacy produced the kind of law which precipitated the trend towards a secularised government, and of society, and ultimately evolved into Humanism. .